Friday, May 05, 2006

WAPL 2006: Have you Heard About...

Presenter Stef Morrill gave an animated show-and-tell of dozens of great ideas - books, web sites, services - that we can use in our libraries (and just for ourselves!). Without further ado:

Pandora - it's like reader's advisory for music; enter the title of a song you like and Pandora will find other music you might like

"squeezebox": a brand name for a small device you plug into your stereo that will stream music from your computer to your stereo if you have a wireless network

lifehacker.com: "computers make us more productive...yeah, right!" - all about neat things and ways to work faster and better, with more fun - great sites, great tips, really cool stuff; it's a blog so you can subscribe to its RSS feeds

zohowriter.com - web-based word processor, you can have templates, share documents with other people

Open WorldCat - the OCLC database searchable through Google; enter your zip code to find a nearby library that owns the items you want; at Santa Monica PL, if you search the catalog, it will use Open WorldCat to tell you what libraries nearby also own the item

everystockphoto.com - every photo has a Creative Commons license instead of a copyright - image search area with thumbnails of images; hover over an image to see the larger version of it

tiltomo.com - image searching based on color or texture or theme or subject

librarything.com: catalog your own books online - up to 200 free, a charge for more. It keeps track of your personal library; it's a social reader's advisory tool; see what other people who own a book are reading & get book recommendations; pulls in a book's cover art from Amazon, and catalog info from LC; instead of assigning subject headings to books "mundanes" tag books with keywords

wislisjobs.com - Jess Bruckner's project, lists job openings in the state, if you're looking for a job subscribe to the RSS feed

rollyo.com - roll your own search engine; define which web sites you want it to search. Maybe a library could roll their "internet search by subject" pages into a specialized search engine.

Playaway - self-playing digital audiobook; the book is pre-loaded on the device; libraries can circulate them like books (they're pretty durable); they're coming out with a library discount program this summer

Libraries411 - based on your zip code it pulls up a map of all the libraries in your area; you can edit the information about your library; you can use this map on your library's web site

Mashup (v): to take data from 2 or more sources and shove them on top of each other

2 comments:

Thank you for including info on my site, Stef and Nichole! This site allows me to keep a skill that has become important and fascinating to me sharp- web design and maintenance, while being creative. If someone is interested in posting a library job in the state or close to the Wisconsin border, just send me the posting...I don't charge, and I don't make a dime from this site. It averages right around 4,000 hits a day on the weekdays, and 1,500 hits a day on the weekends (a special thank you to Rachel Singer Gordon and Sarah Johnson at Eastern Illinois).

How am I s'posed to get any work done with all these cool links to browse? Thanks for an excellent list. I'm a big fan of rollyo -- and, of course, the Pez MP3 player is the highest use of modern technology.

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